REVISED: Dark Nest
by Certain POV
Summary: Just as I made a REVISED for Fate of the Jedi, I figured Dark Nest could use the same treatment. And here, I intend to not only make the story at least marginally better, but also make the next generation of heroes - Jacen, Jaina, Tahiri, and the like - as the focuses instead of the Big Three. (This fic has been discontinued).


_Welcome, Jacen._

Jacen heard the multitude of voices in his head say that as he landed the _Solo Quest_ on the desert floor nearby a vast mountain. The world that he landed on had no name, as far as he knew anyway, yet he could feel it thriving with life through the Force, and he knew, without having to be told by the unified voices, that they were what called him. And in that mountain, he could feel a faction of presences, all waiting for him.

Mere days before, he had heard the multitude in his head tell him to, _Come_. As ambiguous as that was, the impression that it left on Jacen's Force-senses led him here, on a backwater desert planet in the Unknown Regions. After dropping out of hyperspace, he could feel others here, all of whom were familiar, waiting for him alongside the unfamiliar presences.

Tahiri Veila, Zekk, Alema Rar, Tekli, Lowbacca, Tesar Sebatyne, and Jaina. Their voices had all been intermingled with the unfamiliar ones as they greeted him here.

He offered no reply, at least not one that was as distinct as what they just sent out to him. He only sent them the impression of an acknowledgement; uncertain of whom he was going to meet aside from his friends and sister, he wanted to keep a close-enough guard around his own aura.

After cycling the _Quest_ 's engines down and disembarking, Jacen shut the boarding ramp back up, locked the ship, and then headed on toward the mountain ahead. It didn't take him long before he found a narrow, human-sized cave that marked the mountain's entrance.

As he headed toward the entrance, Jacen started to wonder why Jaina and the others were all here, and why he had joined them. Why did the multitude of voices call out to him? Did they also call out to Jaina, Tahiri, and everyone else? He'd been out of contact with his friends and family after continuing his sojourn into non-Jedi Force sects following the resolution of the Bothan War a mere year earlier, so he didn't know whether or not they came here because they also heard the same voices call to them.

What connection was there between him and the others that they were all here?

Once Jacen finally entered the cave, he took out a glowrod from his utility belt, activated its green glow, and then began following the curving passageway that slithered onward into further darkness. The only sounds that Jacen could hear were his own footsteps as he carefully picked his way across the dusty ground; the voices in his head were silent now.

Minutes passed before he noticed that there was a yellow glow in the next curve up ahead. Still keeping his glowrod on, he continued onward, and only when he entered the cavern where the yellow glow originated did he lower his own rod, shutting it off and replacing it in its respective belt pouch while not taking his eyes away from the gathering around him.

Jacen stood at one end of a circle of several other beings around the fire that emitted the yellow glow. Very few of the beings were the people he knew, and they were placed throughout sporadically. Tekli was several beings off to his right while Tahiri was equidistant from him to the left. Closer to him on either side were Lowbacca and Zekk respectively. Jaina was on the other side of the fire ahead of him, with Alema and Tesar on her left and right.

The rest of the beings in the cavern were insects of various sizes, ranging from the size of Jacen's fist to being as tall and wide as Lowie, as well as ranging in colors, and all of them were looking directly at Jacen.

Jacen himself wasn't really terrified at the sight of so many bugs around him; he was merely curious, as he always had been with other more primitive beings back when he was a child. But from the impressions that he was getting from their presences, he could feel that they were as sapient as he, Jaina, and the others were.

He was about to look to Jaina and ask her what was going on when a shadowed form rose up from the other side of the fire, ahead of Jacen's sister. Jacen's attention turned to the newly-appeared figure and, this time, as if in compensation for the fact that he wasn't the least startled in seeing so many various-sized insects around him, a look of horror dawned upon his face when he saw what the figure looked like.

Technically, the bald figure looked like an adult human male, about as old as Jacen, yet he was so pale and scarred that Jacen thought that the other man might have been a humanoid hybrid of two unknown species. The unknown man's lips appeared to be brought up in a friendly-looking smile, as if his mouth were being held up by strings,

But once Jacen was past the shock at seeing the man's grotesque appearance, he then took notice of his clothes. He wore a resplendent, blood-red cape while his tunic and trousers were all midnight-black, lined with the similar blood-red of his aristocratic-looking cape.

Then, what struck Jacen the most about the figure was the familiar blue of his eyes; while blue eyes were nothing special to be seen in humans, Jacen recognized those eyes well from his childhood, in the now-destroyed Jedi Academy on Yavin 4, where he had been with Jaina, Tenel Ka, Lowie, and others. Among them also happened to be the figure who stood before him and greeted him.

"Hello, Jacen; we are so glad that you could join us. The hive that you see before you is Unu, and we-" the figure waved at himself "-are UnuThul."

"UnuThul? Don't you mean Raynar Thul?" Jacen asked. "What happened to you, Raynar? We thought you were dead! What's going on here?"

"Raynar Thul is dead, Jacen," UnuThul said. "In his stead, UnuThul has risen to guide Unu and the other nests of Yoggoy toward unity and peace."

Jacen was speechless for a moment. "I'm all ears, Ray- I mean, UnuThul. Please, start from the top; explain the situation to me more clearly."


End file.
